3D Assistants IV: Nulling Layers

3D Assistants IV: Nulling Layers

By Jim Tierney, Digital Anarchy

If you have close to 300 layers you may need some help animating all of them:

1. Create another 1 pixel by 1 pixel null in the center of the Cylinder.

2. Turn on the Null's 3D switch.

3. Select all of the layers. Make sure you did not select any of the lights or nulls.

4. With all layers selected grab the parenting Pickwhip and select the Layer null. This will select the null object as the parent of all the layers selected. Making it very easy to attach a large number of layers to a single null.

5. After parenting all the layers to the null object, set a keyframe for the Y rotation parameter of the null object at the beginning of the time line.

6. Move to the end of the time line and set the Rotation to ˆ’ 1 X 0.0.

And that is it. We now have lights rotating around the Cylinder. And the Cylinder itself is rotating in the opposite direction. With everything controlled by null objects.